Maintenance of freshness of fruits and vegetables is of utmost importance. But do you know how the freshness is maintained in the fruits and vegetables ? The amount of chlorophyll is a good indicator of fruit ripeness for a large number of fruits. So, If we can find out the chlorophyll level in the fruit, the freshness levels can be generalized.
And, all this chlorophyll judging is not needed to done by any “big- boom” chemistry lab experiments. Simply by using, a machine, a sensor to be specific, we can find out how fresh or not a fruit is. A large number of sensors are being developed to establish the ripeness and in this line, Wireless Handheld Spectrometer is developed for the knowledge of same. This development makes measurements in the visible spectrum. Chlorophyll Fluorescence measurements are used for crop growth strategy optimization.
No smartphone or any other external device is needed for this activity. The amount of chlorophyll can be immediately read on the display. With this sensor, the ripeness stage can be established even more accurately due to a measurement that can’t be done with the naked eyes. By using a simple probe, not only the ripeness of fruit, but also of seeds can be simply read on the display. The sensor can be connected to a smart phone, but can also function standalone.
The sensor is not just suitable for measuring fruit ripeness to decide the optimal moment of harvesting, it can also be used to measure chlorophyll in seeds (if necessary after the fruit has been extracted). Chlorophyll in seeds is decisive for the storability of the seeds. The sensor has been commercially available since early 2017, and is compatible with Android and Windows systems.
It is common knowledge that sub-optimal oxygen levels in growing substrates can cause a reduced production of crops. Very low oxygen levels can even create situations where plants are more vulnerable to diseases. Monitoring of oxygen levels in the root zone is nowadays seen as common sense. Although currently the control of those oxygen levels is not always possible there are still many options to bring down the risks. Factors like the BOD (Biological Oxygen Demand) content of the feed water, the feed water oxygenation, the microbial contamination, Biofilms inside the feed water system, can all be the cause of increased risk of low oxygen levels in the root zone.
